Sunday, December 29, 2002

A story released today by Mercury News reports that in Japan, baby carriages are a rare sight on Tokyo streets. Rural areas are nearly devoid of youngsters. These are just the most obvious signs of a trend that's strangling the country's future, as maternity wards shrink and kindergarten classrooms are abandoned across the country.

A generation of Japanese is shunning marriage and childbirth, giving their nation one of the world's lowest birthrates, with profound consequences. A steadily shrinking labor force promises to starve the world's second-largest economy just as baby-boomers swell the ranks of retirees. And as Japan's population declines, so will its influence.

Japan's birthrate is 1.3 per woman per lifetime, compared with 2.1 in the United States. The nation's population will begin shrinking in 2005, and in 25 years, more than a third of Japanese will be 65 or older.

Like the hundreds of thousands of men who lock themselves in their rooms to escape the pressures of a rigid social system, Japanese women fear being trapped in marriage and are disengaging from traditional family roles. Smarter and better educated than any previous generation, they're unable to find companies that accept working mothers or husbands who embrace working wives.

Until the late 1960s, the average Japanese woman first married when she was 24 1/2 years old. A woman who didn't marry by 25 was considered too old.

Now the average age for a woman's first marriage is 27.2 and rising. In 1980, when Japan's economy was growing vigorously, 80 percent of women age 28 were married. In 1995, 55 percent were. Today, 45 percent are.

Katsura Komami ought to be a catch. The 27-year-old executive at a giant automotive manufacturer is well-educated and attentive. She frequently travels abroad and enjoys musical theater and fashion. She wants a baby someday.

But like thousands of other ambitious women in Japan, Komami isn't thinking about marriage. She prefers to remain in the bedroom in her parents' modest apartment where she grew up.

Komami shyly acknowledges that she's a ``parasite single,'' a popular Japanese term for the more than 7 million unmarried Japanese women who live with mom and dad.

Nearly 90 percent of unmarried Japanese women in their 20s and 60 percent of single women in their late 30s still live with their parents, said Rieko Suzuki of Tokyo's Dentsu Institute for Human Studies, who's written a book explaining the nation's low birthrate.

``You can have a much better life without getting married,'' said Masahiro Yamada, a sociology professor who coined the phrase ``parasite single'' to describe the phenomenon. ``There's a new term in the society called `wedding poverty,' '' Yamada said, because ``when you marry, you become poor.''

Japanese companies rarely offer a ``mommy track,'' a flexible work schedule to accommodate child care needs. Career women face the same demands as men to work long hours; during peak work periods, many don't get home before midnight. If they get pregnant, they often are forced to quit.

Just meeting a prospective partner can be an ordeal. Marriages traditionally were arranged between families, and while arranged marriages have gone out of style, many Japanese still aren't comfortable with U.S.-style dating.

Dr. Shigesato Takahashi, the chief researcher at the National Institute of Population and Social Science Research, said government data revealed that 49.8 percent of unmarried Japanese men ages 18 to 34 said they had no social relations -- no casual friendships, no dating relationships, no love affairs -- with anyone of the opposite sex. The comparable level for women is 41.9 percent.

``People who are trying so hard to pass university entrance exams, they actively suppress their desire to go out,'' Takahashi said.

Men spend long hours in the office and pass most evenings entertaining male clients or socializing with male colleagues or bosses. While Tokyo boasts more than 80,000 restaurants, men and women rarely dine together, except in the most romantic venues.

And marriage isn't the ticket to a good sex life. In Japan's only comprehensive study of sex lives, completed three years ago, one in five married couples in their 30s and 40s said they were ``sexless,'' meaning they have sex less than once a month.

``It's hard for Americans to believe,'' said Takao Sano of Mitsui Homes, one of the nation's largest home builders. ``But 40 percent of our customers ask us to separate the bedrooms'' between husband and wife. Often the couples are in their late 40s. Usually, Sano says, it's the wife who wants a separate room.